New Oil

Just a quick post to let you know the final olive tally: 134 kilos per Frantoio Matraia’s official scale. We spent this morning stripping the last four trees and because there were so few on each of them it only took us a couple of hours. The personnel at the frantoio had said to be there a half hour before our 5 pm appointment and it is a good thing we were. It took us most of that half hour to get into the parking lot and up to the loading dock. We finally tipped our bags of olives into the mill’s cestino (bin) at 10 minutes to 5. From then on it was watch and wait. Just like the Italians, we kept an eagle eye on our olives as they were processed from fruit to oil. At some point “our” olives became “my” olives. The gentleman who arrived just after us asked when his batch would be processed and the man who checked us in and weighed the loads said, “Dopo la signora (After the lady).” After almost two hours we left with nearly 23 liters of fresh, bright green olive oil—about 14% of the original weight. That is quite good considering an average return is 10-12%. In the picture you can see our oil streaming from the pipe into our plastic jugs. We took it back to the house and then went for a celebratory dinner at Ristorante La Fonte. A more detailed explanation of the olive to oil process (and more photos) will be in tomorrow’s post.